15 reasons to be fan of the New Jersey Devils

Almost all his career in the “New Jersey” was the greatest goalkeeper in human history. Martin Broder – all records of the League in regular championships. Including the record for the scored washers (sometimes it was funny).

It was the “Devils” who most often forced the League to rewrite its own rules. The ban on hooks, the “Broder’s zone” (trapeze outside the gate, where the goalkeeper has the right to play), the “Avery rule” – the three most famous precedents, even in the third case, the Devils acted as victims.

In the “New Jersey” played a good half of all players who won the youth and adult championships of the world, the Olympics, the Cup of Canada (World Cup) and the Stanley Cup – Igor Larionov, Scott Niedermayer and Vyacheslav Fetisov. At some point, there were four of them: Joe Sakic, then a Canadian generation with Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Taves.

“New Jersey” remembers their own: more than 20 players of the team, leaving it, then returned again – from Claude Lemieux to Scott Gomez and it is possible that Ilya Kovalchuk.

Legends of the “New Jersey” might not have been: in 1995, an agreement was reached on moving the team to Nashville. However, the “Devils”, Oops, suddenly won the Stanley Cup, after which the young and energetic commissioner of the League, Gary Bateman, with incredible efforts, settled the conflict between the city administration and the owner of the club: they say the commission agent swore that under his rule no Stanley Cup winner would change his residence.

A team that shows the most consistent adherence to hostility: between Devils and the Rangers, there was not a single exchange for all 35 years of the existence of the teams (the League’s record, even the Edmonton and the Calgary, somehow could not stand). Which, of course, did not prevent free agents from fleeing New Jersey to rich New York: but neither Driver, Holic, nor Gomez achieved anything on the Hudson.

Preceded by “New Jersey”, “Colorado Rockies”, for a while coached personally by Don Cherry. It was not very effective, but very funny.

The team, which is by average impenetrability (the smallest number of skipped pucks per game) is still one of the leaders of the League of the last 35 years (from the date of moving to New Jersey) along with Minnesota Wild. Unites these clubs is that in the most impenetrable times their chief coach was Jacques Lemaire.

The trainer of the “Devils” Jim Shonfeld fulfilled the treasured dream of all coaches and players of the NHL, knocking out a scoundrel Don Koharski. After that, the NHL judges refused to serve the Devils matches (yellow shirts), and after returning to the ice, they sue the Devils tickets in the first Stanley Cup semi-final in their history (against Boston, 1988).

Not once in the first 30 years in the League “Devils” did not win less than three matches in the later series of playoffs (semifinals and finals, 3 losses 3: 4 and 7 wins with different scores). In 2012, for the first time limited to two victories (the final with “Los Angeles”). Simply put, the higher the round, the more dangerous the “Devils”. It usually happens vice versa.

“Devils” show close to absolute conservatism in the form: they never changed the outline of the emblem and carried out only one notable redesign, replacing the green with black. The throwing of other teams at the same time (Anaheim, Islanders, Edmonton and many others, including even experienced “Rangers”) was awkward to look at.

At the same time, the excellent designers of the club entered the outlines of the devil and in the combination of NJ, and in the letters L (Lowell), A (Albany), U (Utica) and even B (Binghampton). Who else showed such cunning?

“Devils” – holders of anti-record in the number of individual awards among all teams that won the Stanley Cup three or more times (even “Conn Smythe” only two). Here they always respected the truth “What is painted on the chest is more important than what is written on the back!”

For 35 years the team has beaten the attacks of churchmen, refusing to change its name.